Comments for Centauri Dreamshttps://www.centauri-dreams.org
Imagining and Planning Interstellar ExplorationSat, 14 Sep 2019 23:30:54 +0000hourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.11Comment on Looking for Lurkers: A New Way to do SETI by Mike Serfashttps://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/09/04/looking-for-lurkers-a-new-way-to-do-seti/comment-page-1/#comment-197700
Sat, 14 Sep 2019 23:30:54 +0000https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=42926#comment-197700Speaking of stealth … https://phys.org/news/2019-09-blackest-black-material-date.html Absorbs 99.96% of light from any angle. If a “Lurker’s” stealth is accidental because our friends just really love to absorb photons for energy, maybe they’ve neglected to paint the stars back onto the sky, and exoplanet hunters will stumble across this handiwork any day now.
]]>Comment on The Human Adventure is Just Beginning: Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture at 40 by Robin Dattahttps://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/09/13/the-human-adventure-is-just-beginning-alien-and-star-trek-the-motion-picture-at-40/comment-page-1/#comment-197698
Sat, 14 Sep 2019 22:34:24 +0000https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=42953#comment-197698.]]>A marathon tour-de-force, thank you! Since I don’t watch movies (and no TV since shortly after returning from Desert Storm), there were no spoilers. Many QUestions, Answers, Comments, Kudos: 🦆.
]]>Comment on The Human Adventure is Just Beginning: Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture at 40 by [BLOG] Some Saturday links | A Bit More Detailhttps://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/09/13/the-human-adventure-is-just-beginning-alien-and-star-trek-the-motion-picture-at-40/comment-page-1/#comment-197697
Sat, 14 Sep 2019 22:30:42 +0000https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=42953#comment-197697[…] Klaes at Centauri Dreams reviews the two late 1970s SF films Alien and Star Trek I, products of the same […]
]]>Comment on The Human Adventure is Just Beginning: Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture at 40 by Mike Serfashttps://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/09/13/the-human-adventure-is-just-beginning-alien-and-star-trek-the-motion-picture-at-40/comment-page-1/#comment-197696
Sat, 14 Sep 2019 22:06:21 +0000https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=42953#comment-197696Sci-fi predictions usually fail on matters of human behavior. Depending on the decade it was written, sci-fi came with ashtrays, with sexual harassment at work, with gays banned from the military and so on. There are a few wacky wonderful attempts (Ursula Le Guin’s or Walter Jon Williams’ novels or the movie Zardoz) to break out of the shell of contemporary assumption, but people can only do so much. IF there is a future, if it’s not horrible, then it could be anything. Picture what you could do if you could trust nanotech not to be evil. You could have 3D tissue printed explorers made out of synthetic cells with despammed genomes and no fear of cancer and other ills, generated from seeds of concentrated data no bigger than a Starshot probe that blossoms and blooms on alien Oort objects. Take it full cycle – maybe prior to selecting and briefing them on their missions the animating systems try to humanize their newborn explorers with fake memories and realistic simulations of pre-space society for cultural continuity, doing things like reading and commenting on crude electronic forums about hypothetical interstellar exploration…
]]>Comment on The Human Adventure is Just Beginning: Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture at 40 by Ashley Baldwinhttps://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/09/13/the-human-adventure-is-just-beginning-alien-and-star-trek-the-motion-picture-at-40/comment-page-1/#comment-197695
Sat, 14 Sep 2019 21:57:54 +0000https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=42953#comment-197695I seem to remember Dan O’Bannon talking about the origins of Alien in the “Making of alien” movie accompanying book. Foremost was an ingenious episode of the “Twilight Zone” in which gremlins appear on the wing of a large passenger plane in a storm. Mechanical engine mayhem ensues, against the dark backdrop of the tempest and building tension in the cabin – driving a watching passenger insane before forcing a ( successful) emergency landing .

Commercial carrier, scary,dangerous & alien life form reciting the equilibrium. With added tension brought on by a dark dystopian background . Every days Joes suffer as the central characters . All pushed to their limits and beyond.

]]>Comment on The Human Adventure is Just Beginning: Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture at 40 by Paul Gilsterhttps://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/09/13/the-human-adventure-is-just-beginning-alien-and-star-trek-the-motion-picture-at-40/comment-page-1/#comment-197694
Sat, 14 Sep 2019 21:29:05 +0000https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=42953#comment-197694The Daedalus team is still very much with us, at least some of them. And Alan Bond is still quite active in aerospace matters. Here’s a recent interview:

]]>Comment on The Human Adventure is Just Beginning: Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture at 40 by Charleyhttps://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/09/13/the-human-adventure-is-just-beginning-alien-and-star-trek-the-motion-picture-at-40/comment-page-1/#comment-197693
Sat, 14 Sep 2019 21:11:01 +0000https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=42953#comment-197693“Much of the origins of this particular alien are a mystery, so the possibility that it is the result of bioengineering is not out of the question. For all we know, it could have been designed as a bioweapon by the Space Jockey species. Certainly the human Company saw their potential as a weapon, among other things. ”

Actually, the story of ‘Aliens’ was completely explained in the second to the last film of the alien franchise. In that film, they (the rich billionaire who wanted to stop his death, so he sent his daughter) discovered that the race of beings which they had called ‘the Engineers’ had created these monsters to serve as bio weapons against various targets. To test out their theory the Engineers went to many planetary systems and seeded life on many planets (including earth, in the first scene) so it had various testbeds against which to pit their bio weapon – ‘Alien’. So that’s the reason why those particular creatures were created as best as I can tell.

By the way, I totally disagree with the idea that you could not have heard the explosion of the ore carrying spacecraft in the movie ‘Alien’. That was the tremendous explosion when the nuclear power plant let go and it is certainly extremely conceivable that the vaporized gaseous material from the explosion could have easily reached the escape pod as it was moving away from the point of the explosion. In that case, the vaporized gaseous material could have served as a conduit for pressure waves (i.e. sound waves), which could have been interpreted as an explosion. And as was clearly shown in the movie the craft was totally buffeted by a force that would be easily interpreted as a vaporized gas. So I conclude that she was able to very easily have not only seen, but heard the explosion.

As a total aside, does anyone know if anyone that was originally on the original Daedalus team – is anyone still alive and kicking that could be possibly grilled as to their views as how changing technology might reshape their original vision ?

]]>Comment on The Human Adventure is Just Beginning: Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture at 40 by Geoffrey Hillendhttps://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/09/13/the-human-adventure-is-just-beginning-alien-and-star-trek-the-motion-picture-at-40/comment-page-1/#comment-197690
Sat, 14 Sep 2019 19:44:13 +0000https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=42953#comment-197690I agree with Gary Wilson on the world ships. Who would want to spend their whole life in space in a dangerous environment. The whole ship would have to spin to create artificial gravity otherwise it’s occupants would become unhealthy from loss of bone mass and muscle mass. The financial cost would be too high to build it and we could safely use robots to get the same information and smaller ships with much less cost. Enemy Mine is one of my favorite alien films.
]]>Comment on C/2019 Q4 (Borisov): A Likely Interstellar Comet by jonWhttps://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/09/12/c-2019-q4-borisov-a-likely-interstellar-comet/comment-page-1/#comment-197689
Sat, 14 Sep 2019 19:38:38 +0000https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=42990#comment-197689But “landing on it” means matching its velocity, which means we wouldn’t need to hitch a ride anywhere once we were going that fast on its trajectory–we’d already be going there!
]]>Comment on The Human Adventure is Just Beginning: Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture at 40 by Gary Wilsonhttps://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/09/13/the-human-adventure-is-just-beginning-alien-and-star-trek-the-motion-picture-at-40/comment-page-1/#comment-197688
Sat, 14 Sep 2019 18:08:33 +0000https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=42953#comment-197688Humans aren’t going to the stars anytime soon. Personally I don’t believe world ships will work. And the cryogenic sleep idea is probably equally unlikely. World ships would require humans to behave themselves over thousands of years and we never do that. Show me one thousand year period when humans were at peace. The cryogenic approach might work eventually for months long voyages but thousands of years? I don’t think so. And the cost of designing world ships or human crewed star ships? Extravagant to say the least. So obviously probes like Starshot are our only chance to “visit” the nearby stars and their planets. I loved Alien but it is really just a well filmed horror story with great special effects as some have already said. Ridley Scott’s movies always leave me feeling unsatisfied as if a great opportunity had been lost. And as for Star Wars? Good versus evil in the action genre is always going to work but very little real thought went into it. A nice way to earn billions though I suppose and the main characters are and will always be icons.
]]>